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Is Morality an Open and Closed Matter?

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Is Morality an Open and Closed Matter?

I suspect most of us would agree that principles of morality can and do legitimately vary from one nation to another.

Within a nation would we also agree that principles of morality can and do legitimately vary from one political party to another? Would we also agree that such variation is legitimate from one state to another; or perhaps from one city to another or from one family to another?

Is there a universal morality that overrides all community boundaries?

In his essay Open and Closed Morality as published in the book of essays The Morality of Politics W. H. Walsh has written about the difficult and elusive concept of an 'open and closed morality'.

"You have a right to remain silent." I guess all Americans who have reached the age of seven have heard this expression many times on TV. I also expect that all adult Americans agree that our nation was founded on the principle that all citizens have rights. Human rights are written into our constitution.

'Right' and 'good' are important moral concepts. Those who believe that all humans have certain rights are convinced that these rights supersede any consideration of the good. In other words, it is believed by some that humans, qua human, have certain inalienable rights that cannot be denied even in the interest of the good. These rights are considered to be universal and thus applicable to all humans wither they are members of my community or not.

Those who hold the existence of such universal moral principles are considered to have an "open morality" while those who believe that such universal rights do not exist and only the good determines the moral are considered to have a "closed morality".

Those with a closed morality are convinced that there are no rights, there is only the good. Any act that is beneficial to the community, i.e. is a common good, can be judged as moral or immoral based upon the consequences of the action.

I consider myself to have an open morality; what do you consider yourself to be, are you open or closed?

@coberst phil,

coberst wrote:

Is Morality an Open and Closed Matter?

I suspect most of us would agree that principles of morality can and do legitimately vary from one nation to another.

Within a nation would we also agree that principles of morality can and do legitimately vary from one political party to another? Would we also agree that such variation is legitimate from one state to another; or perhaps from one city to another or from one family to another?

Is there a universal morality that overrides all community boundaries?

In his essay Open and Closed Morality as published in the book of essays The Morality of Politics W. H. Walsh has written about the difficult and elusive concept of an 'open and closed morality'.

"You have a right to remain silent." I guess all Americans who have reached the age of seven have heard this expression many times on TV. I also expect that all adult Americans agree that our nation was founded on the principle that all citizens have rights. Human rights are written into our constitution.

'Right' and 'good' are important moral concepts. Those who believe that all humans have certain rights are convinced that these rights supersede any consideration of the good. In other words, it is believed by some that humans, qua human, have certain inalienable rights that cannot be denied even in the interest of the good. These rights are considered to be universal and thus applicable to all humans wither they are members of my community or not.

Those who hold the existence of such universal moral principles are considered to have an "open morality" while those who believe that such universal rights do not exist and only the good determines the moral are considered to have a "closed morality".

Those with a closed morality are convinced that there are no rights, there is only the good. Any act that is beneficial to the community, i.e. is a common good, can be judged as moral or immoral based upon the consequences of the action.

I consider myself to have an open morality; what do you consider yourself to be, are you open or closed?

I would think that we cannot decide what our rights are in a vacuum, so that our decisions as to what are our rights have to take into consideration the social good. After we have done so, we may then often consider rights as independent of good, but we should not be hide-bound about that. An obvious case is the Second Amendment.

So, I think that open or closed morality is a false dichotomy, and simplifiied the issue too much.

@coberst phil,

I think it generalized it too much, many mistures of both are possible. For example I dont believe in universal morals, but my concepts of good are whole humanity wide and I want to make an utopia, what pretty much places me on top of the wall in this classification.

Also, I think the word "moral" or "morals" mean something different, though I dont have time to elaborate right now Smile

@coberst phil,

Principals ruin morality... Reason ruins morality... If it is not natural because people feel it, then no amount of rules or reason will make it work... If you want world wide morality; convince people that humanity is one people, all family, and all human, with each deserving of love and respect...Morality is easy with family...Morality is community...

@Fido,

To say reason ruins morality, is like saying reason ruins kindness- obviously they are concepts which cannot ever be fully understood through the use of reason alone, but in the application of morality, reason is neccersary- for instance an unreasonbly moral person might go around giving all their food away and starve to death. They are very moral, but they have not served the cause of morality as much as somebody who, for instance, gave away a small portion of their food everyday.

@coberst phil,

The present question regarding the nature and morality of torture offers us an excellent opportunity to advance the level of sophistication of our understanding of morality. We learn best when we are questioning a matter that is meaningful to us.

I was eleven years old when Germany and Japan surrendered and WWII was finally over. One searing memory of this war were the stories I read and the movies I watched during and after the war regarding the torture and general brutality that the German Gestapo inflicted upon the people they conquered. I do not know why this left such a strong impression on me but it certainly did.

Coincidentally I have been studying "Moral Imagination" by Mark Johnson. This is the same Johnson who coauthored the book "Philosophy in the Flesh" with George Lakoff. I have decided to apply the theories Johnson presents in his book as a means to illuminate this matter regarding the morality of water torture used by my country in our struggle with Islamic extremists.

Moral understanding is like any other kind of experience; when we examine a domain of experience that relates to human relationships we must focus our attention on human understanding it self. If we do so we discover that human understanding is fundamentally imaginative in character.

To become morally insightful we must become knowledgeable of these imaginative structures. First, we must give up our illusions about absolute moral codes and also our radical moral subjectivism. Second we must refine our "perception of character traits and situations and of developing empathetic imagination to take up the part of others."

Empathy is a character trait that can be cultivated by habit and will. Sympathy is somewhat of an automatic response.

When we see a mother weeping over the death of her child caused by a suicide bomber we feel immediate sympathy. Often we will come to tears. But we do not feel anything like that for the mother who may be weeping over the death of her child who was the bomber.

To understand the bomber we must use empathy. We attempt through imagination and reason to create a situation that will allow us to understand why this was done. This is a rational means to understand someone who acts different than we would.

"Empathy is the idea that the vital properties which we experience in or attribute to any person or object outside ourselves are the projections of our own feelings and thoughts."

The subject viewing an object of art experiences emotional attitudes leading to feelings that are attributes of qualities in the art object thus aesthetic pleasure may be considered as "objectified self-enjoyment in which the subject and object are fused."

The social sciences adopt a similar concept called 'empathic understanding', which refers to the deliberate attempt to identify with another person and accounting for that persons actions by "our own immediate experience of our motivations and attitudes in similar circumstances as we remember or imagine them". This idea refers to a personal resonance between two people.

"What is crucial is that our moral reasoning can be constrained by the metaphoric and other imaginative structures shared within our culture and moral tradition, yet it can also be creative in transforming our moral understanding, our identity, and the course of our lives. Without this kind of imaginative reasoning we would lead dreadfully impoverished lives. We would be reduced to repeating habitual actions, driven by forces and contingencies beyond our control."

Can you imagine an individual who is a hard headed realist and very accomplished at empathy sanctioning the use of water torture on anyone, friend or enemy?

@avatar6v7,

avatar6v7 wrote:

To say reason ruins morality, is like saying reason ruins kindness- obviously they are concepts which cannot ever be fully understood through the use of reason alone, but in the application of morality, reason is neccersary- for instance an unreasonbly moral person might go around giving all their food away and starve to death. They are very moral, but they have not served the cause of morality as much as somebody who, for instance, gave away a small portion of their food everyday.

Moral forms/concepts are not really concepts...If you cannot point to the reality you cannot form the concept, and if you do anyway on slight evidence then you cannot compare the reality to its form... We know it when we feel it, so if you want more of it, you have to give people the reason and ability to feel it more... Build communities...Build families, and build nations, and help humanity to conceive of itself as an extended and loving family... There is no easy way to morality, because morality means an obligation, and obligations are more easily reasoned out of than reasoned into... Look for an example in Genesis... The first crime was against God, and the second was against man, and in each, reason played a part... It is because injustice is always justified, and people doing wrong must first justify it to themselves...I give up.. When I start to justify anything I know I am getting ready to do wrong...

@coberst phil,

Reason doesnt exists alone, its a tool we use to achieve the objectives generated by the subjective side.

@coberst phil,

I would say that the basic facts that we have with which to start the search for the cusp of instinctive and reasoned behavior might be:

1) Somewhere in the chain of life, from its mysterious beginning to the present, there exists a point when the behavior of creatures is influenced by something we call reason rather than something we call instinct.

2) Using computer lingo, we can classify instinct as behavior caused by hardwired algorithms.

3) Reason is a means to control behavior based upon real time assessment of real time circumstances.

4) Reason requires that data from the senses be ordered into some fashion that will facilitate real time inferences, this is called conceptualization; followed by inferences made from these concepts.

5) We have, from computer modeling technology, empirical evidence that the neural system that control perception and mobility have the capacity to conceptualize and to infer. In other words, the essential elements of sensorimotor control are also similar to the essential elements of reasoning.

6) If biology has created the structure that has the elements for reasoning, it is logical to conclude that such a system would not be duplicated for reason but that this very same system would be modified in whatever manner is necessary for it to function also as an instrument that can reason.

Instinct controlled the behavior of creatures until reason kicked in and now humans are controlled to a large extent by reason rather than instinct. Throughout time the evolutionary process, which includes instinctive behavior, maintained some form of equilibrium in the world. With the introduction of rational creatures this evolutionary process has been drastically disrupted.

As reasoning creatures that have disrupted the evolutionary process, we must replace this evolutionary process with a rational process that can duplicate or improve on the natural evolutionary process. If we cannot perform this prodigious task adequately the whole shebang will be flushed down the toilet.

Secretary of State Powell said in regards to the Iraq war that "if we break it, we own it". I think we can say the same thing about our human activity and natural evolution. We break natural evolution and thereby we own the problems caused by that action.

@coberst phil,

coberst wrote:

As reasoning creatures that have disrupted the evolutionary process, we must replace this evolutionary process with a rational process that can duplicate or improve on the natural evolutionary process. If we cannot perform this prodigious task adequately the whole shebang will be flushed down the toilet.

I dont see why the evolutionary process should be repaired, if it was indeed broken.

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